Capital Celluloid 2012 - Day 156: Mon June 4

Reds (Beatty, 1981): BFI Southbank, NFT1, 4.15pm
This is screening as part of the Warren Beatty season at BFI Southbank and is also being shown on Wednesday June 27. Details here.

Chicago Reader review: 
'Warren Beatty's shapely 1981 epic, based on the life of radical journalist John Reed, is a stunningly successful application of a novelistic aesthetic—a film that makes full and thoughtful use of its three-and-a-half-hour length to develop characters, ideas, and motifs with a depth seldom seen in movies. Though it deals with historical events—World War I, the growth of the workers' movement in America, the Russian Revolution—history is not used simply as a backdrop; rather, Beatty focuses on the interdependence of personal choices and historical developments, mingling ideology and emotion in a very human whole. The cast is extraordinary, with Diane Keaton in particular achieving a weight and authority she hadn't shown before. With Beatty, Edward Herrmann, Jerzy Kosinski, Jack Nicholson, Paul Sorvino, Maureen Stapleton, and a good many real-life “witnesses” of the periods and events covered, including Henry Miller and George Jessel.'
Dave Kehr

Excuse the awful trailer.                                   

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